My life's work to collect what little I have means nothing while things like this are going on. I might go borrow millions of dollars too, because everyone is under the assumption that no one is paying anything back when the whole ship goes down.
It's very difficult for languages to "escape the lab" as it's often put. I'd say the biggest factors are:
- Developers are often reluctant to learn new tools.
- Project managers are reluctant to use new languages, seeing a small community as a risk.
- Academic projects have different priorities than industry. Implementations done by academic teams often need substantial work before they meet industry needs.
This boils down to visible necessity. Without that, it's difficult for a language to reach critical mass. But the visibility part is tricky, because it's really a marketing problem, not a technical one. Sometimes organizations are blind to their own pain or even are attached to it, believing it's necessary (ORM comes to mind). Sometimes a language spreads because someone less risk adverse has very visible success, creating a pressure to copy their choice (37signals and Ruby for example).
But language research is still worthwhile even if it withers after publishing. The ideas propagate, and often end up as features/libraries in more broadly accepted languages (erlang probably inspired akka for example).
What infuriates me is the lack of outrage by all the hipsters who hold everyone else to such a high standard. The same people who are still trying to drag Bill Gates through the mud for his business tactics in the 90's are dead silent about their favorite company employing methods that are at least as outrageous.
Whether you're an Apple guru or not, everyone loses when there's no competition in the market. It seems like the ultimate irony for the "Think Different" company to be acting like this. Still, I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
It could be argued that Apple is acting within the legal system, whereas Bill Gates and Microsoft were convicted and settled numerous lawsuits.
And while I disagree with the patent suits, I'd have preferred that the competition found ways to make smartphones that _didn't_ infringe of any of those patents, and made an even better product because of it. (For instance, a phone with facial recognition doesn't need slide to unlock).
